A Story About The Sadness

That time in 2020, during a Mirimiri session (traditional Maori healing massage) when the practitioner found my sadness.

“Aue, so much sadness,” she said

Pressing into my back
Holding me down

She needs help
She asks the man to come over -- 

“Is that ok?”

I said yes

But what I wanted to say was

No, just leave it there

Leave it alone

It’s old and stale

Sucked into every cell

Written on my bones

It pulls my shoulders down

Hearty as

Keeps me close to the earth
I might fall over otherwise

And I’m not sure how to live without it

Will I still be me when it’s gone?

I didn’t say any of that out loud but I think she heard me anyway
Her eyes said - "Get real, it’s gonna take more than one rub down to move that along”

The thing about sadness is when it’s that old you don’t even know it’s there

I remember at Uni, the first year, we were learning about how new technology becomes a part of our culture -- the question was how do we know when that’s happened?  -- the answer was when we don’t see it anymore -- 

Like a T.V, in almost every house if you walk into a lounge room, all the furniture is shaped around it, pointed at it, it’s the centre of attention but it’s not really, because no one sees it

They turn it on at night and it becomes something else

It’s the 6 ‘o’clock news

It’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer

It’s the story of Ross and Rachel

It’s not even the T.V now

We say “Oh did you see old so and so on TV last night?” 

We’re not talking about the box that sat there alone all-day

That’s like this sadness

We only pay attention to it by what comes through it

The art it makes

The songs it sings

The road rage

The violence

But it’s centre stage

You know

It’s running the show

We just don’t see it anymore

And it passes through us

A message from the womb

Invisible chords to our tupuna

Clinging on for life through the sadness

Do you think they wanna be here?

Hell no, who wants to die and then realise oh shit, we’re still in this mess

It’s old

It’s stale

And you will have to grieve


And all this came to mind as I was driving through the Hungry Jack’s drive-through and put the ‘Once A Panther’ podcast on, it’s the Polynesian Panthers, and the first episode - ‘Identity’ it’s called - they start telling their stories and I start crying and the girl at Hungry Jack’s is asking me if I want my receipt

I want to stop listening to the podcast right there and then

Because I can feel it

Old and stale in my bones

All the things left unmourned

I see my Poppy with a Lion Red

Enjoying the end of his life

I wonder if he enjoyed the rest of it

Or if he’s ok now


My Aunty said back in the islands he took good care of his Mum

He hand-made this old trolley so that he could put her in it to move her around, push her out to the shower to give her a wash

My Nana, 13 kids

The tea lady now

Laying out Malt biscuits for Palagi folk

Who didn’t even see her

Walking home, crying

My Mama, crying that she couldn’t do more

And me now, crying in a Daewoo

In the fucken drive-through

No one wanted us to be crying the same tears

Dying of the same cancers

Drinking the same beers

The ones that wash it all away

For a day or so

So you will have to grieve

Before the sadness takes up all the space where love was meant to go, and everything that should have been for you, and every soul that waits to rest, stays tethered to the rotting corpses of all the things that go left unmourned

That’s the part they don’t tell you
That we only ever came here to let it all go